Moderate Islam

I read you, and Raymond Ibrahim, and a whole bunch of other folks. I have to lean his way on the moderate Islam question. Here's the deal. Their culture believes, is yoked to belief. But at bottom they don't believe like we do, or like we used to. Muslims are not monotheistic in any sense we know because Allah does not have the attributes of God. Nearly tthe opposite. He takes the appealing parts of the idea of God as a hard outer shell, but inside Allah denies freedom to the soul and denies that reason is the soul's true guide. We may have forgotten that that matters, and forgotten to teach it to our children. We are less for it. They have the force of unreason, which seems everywhere ascendant, and to which our response is submissive. We've lost our mojo, metaphysically speaking. Our civilization, the fruit of reason and prudence and faith, rots, while the materialistic nihiilism of Islam rushes in to feed on our decay. To many have fallen from great and good, for you to doubt the likelihood, as Robert Frost said. The good may fall, but how may that whose essence is fallenness, rise? The answer is of course that it must change, and deny its former essense. That ain't gonna happen just by wishin' and hopin'. Your measured good sense is not enough.

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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".